A railway was projected from Dover to Calais, but the shares never came into the market.

The Rhine Navigation shares were snapped up directly.  The original holders, having no faith in their own paper, sold large quantities directly for the account.  But they had underrated the ardor of the public.  At settling day the shares were at 28 premium, and the sellers found they had made a most original hedge; for “the hedge” is not a daring operation that grasps at large gains; it is a timid and cautious maneuver, whose humble aim is to lower the figures of possible loss or gain.  To be ruined by a stroke of caution so shocked the directors’ sense of justice that they forged new coupons in imitation of the old, and tried to pass them off.  The fraud was discovered; a committee sat on it.  Respectables quaked.  Finally, a scapegoat was put forward and expelled the Stock Exchange, and with that the inquiry was hushed.  It would have let too much daylight in on a host of “good names” in the City and on ’Change.

At the same time, the country threw itself with ardor into Transatlantic loans.  This, however, was an existing speculation vastly dilated at the period we are treating, but created about five years earlier.  Its antecedent history can be dispatched in a few words.

England is said to be governed by a limited monarchy; but in case of a struggle between the two, her heart goes more with unlimited republic than with genuine monarchy.  The Spanish colonies in South America found this out, and in their long battle for independence came to us for sympathy and cash.  They often obtained both, and in one case something more; we lent Chili a million at six per cent, but we lent her ships, bayonets, and Cochrane gratis.  This last, a gallant and amphibious dragoon, went to work in a style the slow Spaniard was unprepared for; blockaded the coast, overawed the Royalist party, and wrenched the state from the mother country, and settled it a republic.  One of the first public acts of this Chilian republic was to borrow a million of us to go on with.  Peru took only half a million at this period.  Colombia, during the protracted struggle her independence cost her, obtained a sort of carte blanche loan from us at ten per cent.  We were to deliver the stock in munitions of war, as called for, which, you will ’observe, was selling our loan; for at the bottom of all our romance lies business, business, business.  Her freedom secured, the new state accommodated us by taking two millions of 5 per cent stock at 84.  In all, about ten millions nominal capital, eight millions cash, crossed the Atlantic while we were cool; but now that we were heated by three hundred joint-stock companies, and the fire fanned by seven hundred prospectuses, fresh loans were effected with a wider range of territory and on a more important scale.